


Halber Mensch

by Viridian5



Category: The Sandman, Weiss Kreuz
Genre: Drama, Humor, M/M, Mind Games, Psychic Abilities, Telepathy, things that never happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-01-05
Updated: 2003-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:12:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meditations on telepathy.  (On the hour we broadcast your values....)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Halber Mensch

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "Mission 13: Bruch -- Rain of Revenge" and "Mission 18: Schuld -- Farfarello."
> 
> Written for a challenge: Take any character, any fandom, and write a Things That Never Happened fic that is a series of vignettes, no less than three, no more than five. It must be the same character in all of them.
> 
> All of the titles come from Einstürzende Neubauten songs. The lyrics provided in "Z.N.S." are English translations of a stanza of that song.

_1\. Z.N.S. [C.N.S. (Central Nervous System)]_

We danced in the blackness, he with his katana, I with my gun. He'd been so much friendlier before he realized that I was an enemy of Weiß, so I didn't enjoy invading his dreams as much now. Nobody realized just how much haughty Aya Fujimiya needed to be cuddled, least of all Aya Fujimiya himself. But he needed a gradual seduction, which I had been doing, light touches, a sympathetic ear, the occasional mention that I knew how desperately hard it must have been for him to lose his parents to murder and his sister to a coma. I put so much hard work into my play. I'd touched his dream skin with my lips and fingers and breath, and he'd wanted it, because I knew exactly what he wanted to hear.

Then we had to reveal ourselves as Schwarz, and all my efforts got shot to hell. He knew me now, or thought he did, and no longer trusted anything I'd said or would say. Sucks to be me.

No more beds with tattered, drifting sheets awaited me when I came to visit his dreams now. He always blanked out whatever landscape he'd been in the moment he saw me. It made me wonder if I saw a strong will or latent psi talent at work there.

His katana swept the edge of my coat, missing me only because I moved just in time. Too close. I had to end this before his fury pushed him over into full berserker mode, no matter how pretty he looked when he was angry. He might be a bad-ass fighter and able to dictate some of the conditions in his own mind, but I'd been playing with minds for most of my life. Here, I was the master.

I reached out, knocked his katana from his grip, and grabbed him by the neck, feeling vividly his hot, smooth skin and the warm metal of his earring swinging against my knuckles. I'd missed the feel of his skin, even though I'd only touched it in dreams. Keeping my grip, I pushed him down to his knees.

A threatened creature of black and dark red and white and palest purple, he looked up at me and snarled. His katana reappeared in his grip. Interesting. But dangerous. I'd played with him too often, and he'd learned too well.

I squeezed, tightening my grip on his mind and soul along with his neck. "You're mine," I said. "If you don't fight so hard, you might even enjoy it."

"Never. I'd rather die."

"That could be arranged."

He tried to strike me with his katana, but it couldn't touch me through my shields, so he cast it aside. It winked out in a bright burst of shining metal. His hands scrabbled along my arm. Oh, I loved this. Aya Fujimiya, on his knees in front of me and desperate. I squeezed a little tighter.

Suddenly, he looked a little less desperate, and I didn't know why. I squeezed--

He pushed himself up to his feet, with my hand still on his neck, and thrust his fingers through my fucking _head_. Reality dipped and rolled.

I kneeled on the sticky floor of a crowded club. Familiar music, of an industrial variety, and familiar smells here. What the hell had happened?

Aya Fujimiya stood nearby, still dressed in his dark mission coat and now holding his katana. "Aufstehen!" he yelled, and I got up, not because he'd commanded it but because facing him on my knees made no sense. But none of this made sense. He didn't know German, and if he did, he wouldn't speak it with my accent. I had to adjust myself to think in my native language after so long in Japan.

This West End club didn't exist anymore. It had been torn down to make way for another architectural project that would supposedly show the world that Berlin was restoring itself to its former glory.

Over the sound system, Blixa Bargeld sang/chanted, "Blackout / Can't remember anything / Test card is dancing / Close-down is dancing / White noise is dancing 1, 2, 3, and 4...."

Okay, anybody care to call the odds of situation-appropriate music playing in some random memory I had of this club? Aya could not be familiar with this music on his own. I was in deep shit. Crawford would have a fit.

Hey, Brad, I have bad news and interesting news, I would say. Being Brad, he'd want the bad news first. I'd answer that the bad news wouldn't make as much sense if he didn't hear the interesting news first, and that interesting news was that Aya Fujimiya was a latent psi. The bad news was that I'd pushed him into full expression of it while playing with his mind, and he seemed to be fairly strong and instinctively invasive. Imagine my chagrin. Bet you didn't see that coming, did you, Brad?

If he had, he never would have let me toy with the Weiß kitten.

Of course, Brad would never get a chance to hear my news or have a fit if I didn't figure out where Aya had put us and get myself out.

Aya was trying to do his impassive tough guy look, but I could see the confusion in his pale purple eyes. I could feel it in him. He didn't understand what he'd done. I'd threatened him too far, snapping his walls, and he'd reacted on instinct.

He should have been in pain now from the unfamiliar inrush of thoughts since he didn't have any shields or training to protect him, but he didn't seem to be. Perhaps he truly was a sociopath, or maybe his famous narrow focus, the way he could block out anything that didn't serve at least one of his two goals, served him well here. I'd be hot to untangle how his psi worked under other circumstances.

"This changes nothing," I said.

"This changes everything," he answered, still in German.

"I've been doing this years longer than you have."

He smiled. Aya Fujimiya smiling at anyone other than his sister was so wrong that I couldn't even begin to say how wrong it was. "But you're thinking that neophytes are dangerous because we don't know what we can and can't do. A neophyte could try anything. You don't know if we're in my brain, your brain, or somewhere else entirely. You're in deep shit."

I was thinking that, I didn't know that, and I knew that I was in deep shit, and he'd heard it all. Fuck me.

His eyes flickered nervously, so it seemed that he'd heard that too. Maybe this might not be so bad.

That thought made him even more nervous. I smiled.

 

  


* * *

_2\. Fütter mein Ego [Feed My Ego]_

Crawford had his fearless leader plans to make, and Nagi was neck-deep in some project, so it was up to me to shop for groceries like some hausfrau. I was probably the most practical member of the team, which, frankly, should frighten them.

Farfarello had been bored--maybe he'd run out of nuns and priests to taunt--so he'd gone along with me. And he liked me, because he found my telepathy fascinating. We made quite a picture as we strolled through the aisles. Two anarchists walk into a store....

Everyone stared, though only the children admitted to it. Adults tended to look at us and then very studiously and carefully _not_ look at us, and it wasn't just that we were two gaijin. Farfarello has his scars and eyepatch along with white hair and a single remaining eye that was tawny yellow. He enjoyed the looks and careful not-looks, muttering that the lambs of God should know that a wolf is in the fold and their Shepherd doesn't hear them, and he preferred the children, who hadn't been trained to be sheep yet.

His mind could be repetitive, but sometimes I found that personally helpful. Besides, its colorful imagery and symbolism entertained the hell out of me.

I smiled as I felt all these narrow little minds getting jolted out of their mundane little ruts. The day when we jolted them out of their ruts permanently couldn't come soon enough.

"Are they afraid of me, Schuldig?" he asked, knowing they were but wanting confirmation.

"Yes, but, you know, some of them are wondering if you're an elven warrior. All those video games rot the brain.... You sure you don't have any Sidhe blood?" Under all the damage, he had a kind of delicate prettiness. "Maybe you're a changeling."

Farfarello had issues about his parentage, bad enough that he'd murdered the people who'd raised him over it. He may have repressed the truth, but it was still in there for me to see. I liked to press on the wounds sometimes, though I saved taunts like "son of a nun" only for times when I was really out of my head and looking for a fight. A man who cut himself shouldn't complain when I helped his self-torture along.

"Are you a witch or are you a fairy, / Or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?" he murmured. "You can be cruel, Schuldig."

"_You_ test the faithful with hydrochloric acid." I listened to him a little. "I thought you liked blasphemy."

"Mmmm, yes."

"I'm buying some potatoes."

He lit up. We both missed the foods of our homes. I hadn't eaten really satisfying beef since the night before we arrived in Tokyo.

A street girl waited at the gate when we reached the compound. I stepped over to clear her out of the way, but Farfarello went to his knees in front of her. "My lady," he said.

I gave her a closer look, then smirked. She was dressed like a punk, gutter version of the Virgin Mary in white and blue. She even had a white and blue head cloth--like I know what that's called--over her cherry red and lemon yellow hair. She had one blue eye and one green eye. Her short, ragged skirt showed that she wore white fishnet stockings along with battered black motorcycle boots. White fishnets were just tacky. The balloon she had looked like a big goldfish floating on a string.

No. It... _was_ a big goldfish floating on a string.

"I've lost my doggie again," she said. "I think you helped me before."

Colors, power, and sound exploded from her. Voices, so many voices. Chaos. Flashing images. It was like being in a room full of people on bad LSD trips. Fuck, I was having an episode, right out in the street.

I came to on my hands and knees on the sidewalk, our bags scattered around us, Farfarello's hand tightly gripping my shoulder and his more orderly insanity grounding me. He said, "If I hadn't already made promises, I would be your hound, my lady. I too have eyes of different colors, as you do."

He only had one eye-- Oh, I wasn't even going to get involved. My head hurt too much, and I wanted to throw up. I tasted blood and metal in my mouth, hot and sharp.

"I want my own doggie. What did you say last time?"

Oh, fuck. This could take _hours_.

But Farfarello had it right there. "I told you that he might be looking for you. That perhaps you are lost, not he."

"Yes! That's perfect!" She looked thoughtful. "You deserve a present. I can make you hear butterflies. They go everywhere and see all kinds of interesting things. Or toads. Toads are fun, and they gossip a lot." Several small toads of improbable colors with butterfly wings settled on her shoulders and opened and closed their wings at different intervals.

Would humanity survive whatever Farfarello would ask for? I didn't give a fuck about other people, but _I'd_ rather go on living.

"Helping you is reward enough," he said.

She looked at me. "You have pretty hair, very orange. You don't visit very often."

Wonderful. Madness walked the earth, and she was pissed that I wasn't insane enough.

"I'll try better," I said.

She giggled, then disappeared in a smear of blue and green and bruise-colored light.

"I met one of her sisters once," Farfarello said. "She looked at me very sadly. Their family is older than God."

"Farfarello, if you say one more word I will give you my headache."

Our bags began to float, and the groceries floated back into them. "Are you two done playing?" Nagi asked, looking as disdainful and smug as a teenage telekinetic with the power to level buildings and raise the dead could look. Which was very.

I'd scraped my hands open falling, and probably my knees too. "Do I look like I'm having fun?" Standing up was painful, but had to be done. "What did that girl look like to you?"

"You were kneeling to an ordinary street girl."

"That's not an answer. Was she Irish, dressed in white and blue?"

Nagi started to look worried. "She was Japanese and dressed in the chopped-up remnants of a man's black business suit. She didn't have a shirt on under the jacket."

"And where did she go?"

"I don't know." Nagi started to look really worried. "I better go tell Crawford."

"You do that."

Farfarello smiled at me. "You saw her through my eyes."

I didn't want to think about that.

 

  


* * *

_3\. Seele brennt [Soul Burns]_

Smiling, Crawford touched my face. The light reflected brightly off his glasses, hiding his eyes. His lust rolled me under. I could feel it, see it, taste it, smell it. I could feel it. I could feel it. Sharp and overwhelming.

I didn't want this. I knew that would change soon. I would want what he wanted, and that would be sex and me. His lust would be my lust.

He was my commander. I followed.

Esset hadn't liked how independent-minded I was. I was too inclined to follow my own interests and liked my own private games too much. I wasn't a team player. I needed a keeper.

They handed Brad all the keys and a leash besides.

He felt excited, lustful, powerful. I drowned under it, getting hard. I would like this. I'm a slut, and I get off on pain, others and mine....

"Strip for me," he said, command girding his voice like steel bars. I had my coat half-unbuttoned before I even registered it, and his hot gaze burned through my body all the way to the bone, his/my want ratcheting higher as each button gave way.

He never approached me without foreseeing that he would be successful first. What hope did I have?

None. I melted, and Brad flowed in.

 

### End


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